The East-West Dichotomy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

he ar ticle analyzes the histor ical cou rse of the formation of the categories “East” and “West”, their interpretation in the scientific literature, along with their relevance increasing due to the formation of serious congestion in the contemporary process of globalization. The authors record historical continuity in the identification of the dichotomy and the transcripts of historical and cultural codes of the East and the West. Ignorance of the qualitative differences and various attempts to attribute the appearance of the dichotomy (“The Great Divergence”) to the 19th centur y rigidly linking its appearance to the industrial revolution in the West (“The California School of the New Economic History”) are criticized in the article. The authors emphasize that its interpretation, close to the modern one, is associated with the Age of Discovery when the West could identify its own u niqueness th rough the opening of the East. The roots of the Eurocentric view of the world are analyzed; the processes of its genesis and evolution, the formation of the structure of the social sciences, and the emergence of Orientalism as a holistic direction of studying the East are traced by the authors. The continuing importance of theoretical Orientalism is also noted in the article. DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2016)4-36